


What You Were Chosen For

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "It seems that they did know he was somebody before he was Jack Frost- and the only thing Tooth was really shocked about was that he couldn’t remember this.That they would know makes sense, I mean, they kinda know all children in a way, even if not personally, but that Jack didn’t know he was somebody before he was himself and the others DID holds some implications for me that I would like explored."Tooth and Jack have a conversation about how little the Guardians actually know about what it means when the Man in the Moon chooses someone, and what it means to be chosen like that. Pitch is a major source of uncertainty.Also, this is the first prompt on the LAST PAGE of the kinkmeme! Yes, friends and foes, I have come that far!





	What You Were Chosen For

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 12/28/2016.

“You thought that even though I acted the way I did, I knew I was human? Or, I knew I had been human?”  
  
Tooth nodded. “What you have to understand, Jack, is that we—the Guardians, I mean—don’t know a great deal about what happens when the Man in the Moon chooses someone. All we have are our own experiences. None of us became Guardians without knowledge of our pasts.”  
  
“But, Tooth….” Jack bounced his knee up and down reflexively. “I hardly had any conscious background knowledge of the world. I assumed I was a neutral spirit of winter. I never thought about any consequences to my actions, and I deliberately messed with Bunny many, many times. That I avoided becoming actively malevolent is a small miracle.”  
  
“It means the Man in the Moon chose you well,” Tooth said. “Your center never changed.”   
  
“That’s…less of an answer than I was hoping for,” Jack said. “How did you even know the Man in the Moon chose me? I wasn’t acting like a Guardian, and I didn’t become a Guardian till recently.”  
  
The feathers on Tooth’s head twitched, and she looked uncomfortable. “The Man in the Moon told us,” she said. “But that’s all he told us. Just that you existed. Since other spirits come into existence without him telling us about them, we could only conclude that he had chosen you.”  
  
“And what about how I acted?” Jack asked.  
  
“I had already been in my palace for over a century when you were chosen,” Tooth said. “I know less about how you acted than the others do.”  
  
“Tooth, please. I can tell you’re avoiding the question.”  
  
Tooth met his eyes, but only for a moment. “There’s still so much we don’t know about why the Man in the Moon does what he does,” she said. “But…there’s evidence that he doesn’t always choose people in order to make them Guardians.”  
  
Jack didn’t say anything, patiently waiting for her to continue (though he did keep bouncing his knee).  
  
“All right,” Tooth said. “As far as we can gather, the Man in the Moon also chose Pitch Black.”  
  
“But during the attack on the Tooth Palace, didn’t he say—I mean, it doesn’t make sense.”  
  
Tooth nodded. “_If_ that was what he always said, then you’d be right—the theory that the Man in the Moon chose him wouldn’t make sense. But Pitch’s versions of his past and origins vary widely. What he said here that day wasn’t literally true, and he had to know that we would know that, too. You have to understand, that unless it was very, very long ago, Pitch never had unopposed influence on human minds. Sandy’s just about as old as human civilization, and while Pitch existed before him, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Pitch to refer to a brief period at the dawn of history as the Dark Ages—especially when that phrase is usually understood to mean something else. Anyway, we Guardians weren’t chosen all at once, but over many centuries.”  
  
“Huh,” said Jack. “I imagined it very differently.”  
  
“And the troublesome thing is that we’re actually not even sure how much Pitch believes about the things he says,” Tooth said. “It’s not exactly easy to get him in a neutral situation where we could ask. But, when we consider all of his stories together, it really seems like he was chosen by the Man in the Moon.”  
  
“So, knowing that…there wasn’t any way of knowing that I was going to be a Guardian.”  
  
“No,” Tooth said. “We knew a little about your human life, and we knew a little more about how you were acting after you had been chosen.” She smiled ruefully. “I suppose that was more than you knew.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jack said. “It was.” He put his head in his hand. “I don’t know what I was really looking for with this conversation. I think I kind of wanted to be angry? That I expected this to be a confrontation—you knew who I was and never told me, or like, you should have looked for me sooner to make me a Guardian, or…something. Maybe I was hoping for some kind of good explanation. But instead I find out that even though you knew I had been chosen, you didn’t have any reason to think I needed an introduction to myself, even though the way I acted wasn’t…wasn’t quite human.”  
  
“I wish I had more answers,” Tooth said. “But if it hasn’t been remembered, I can’t know it. And I’m sorry you were alone for so long. We had no idea that you weren’t acting according to the Man in the Moon’s purposes, whatever those are. We assumed he would tell us if there was something about you we absolutely needed to know.”  
  
“Well, he did, didn’t he? Just almost three hundred years later than would have been ideal.” Jack raised his head and looked at Tooth. “I guess there’s really nothing else to do but be glad that time’s over. There’s nothing that’s going to make it not happen the way it did. I should be happy that I know who I am now.”  
  
“I do hope you’ll be happy,” said Tooth. “But I, and the other Guardians, are going to ask that you don’t simply try to forget your past. Your story tells us a little bit more about what the Man in the Moon can do and what he will do. We need that knowledge badly.”  
  
“Because you’re still trying to figure out Pitch,” Jack said. “Where does he fit into all this, if he was chosen?”  
  
“Where do we all fit into all this, if we were all chosen?” Tooth stood and walked to a window. Jack followed her. “I didn’t need to have a palace like this,” she said. “When I was a human, I wasn’t fated. My life could have taken so many different paths. Maybe, since being chosen, the Man in the Moon has showed us all our best paths. But because of Pitch, I can’t fully believe that. And there’s still not enough information around to make the truth clear.” She turned to Jack and reached out and took his hand. “Thanks to you, we’ll know to share what little information we have, right away, if the opportunity comes up again.”  
  
Jack nodded thoughtfully. “And I’ll be right beside you. Yeah,” he said, “for whatever this is, I’m in.” 


End file.
